New research is suggesting that at this moment 9% of United States internet users are using peer-to-peer or P2P networks, which is down substantially from 2007. The market research firm NPD Group, has stated that P2P has actually dropped from 16% to 9% in the last 3 years. This data comes from the 4th quarter of 2010, right after a federal judge shut down LimeWire. This shut down defiantly helped bring that number down, even though other P2P programs saw an increase in usage. The numbers also show that the average number of downloads per person also fell, from 35 per quarter in 07 to 18 per quarter by the finish of 2010. Warner music also did some data mining and found that 13% of consumers were pirates and noted that even the pirates spent some of their money on recorded music. Even though there has been a decent decline in the piracy sector, it is still far from eradicated. It will be truly difficult to gage whether or not we will see piracy decline even further. My money is on a slow and gradual decline but we will never truly be rid of piracy.